Someone had to tell him

April 6, 2006

This is exactly why the [tag]president[/tag] doesn’t like to leave his [tag]bubble[/tag].

Q: You never stop talking about freedom, and I appreciate that. But while I listen to you talk about freedom, I see you assert your right to tap my telephone, to arrest me and hold me without charges, to try to preclude me from breathing clean air and drinking clean water and eating safe food. If I were a woman, you’d like to restrict my opportunity to make a choice and decision about whether I can abort a pregnancy on my own behalf. You are —

Bush: I’m not your favorite guy. Go ahead. (Laughter and applause.) Go on, what’s your question?

Q: Okay, I don’t have a question. What I wanted to say to you is that I — in my lifetime, I have never felt more [tag]ashamed[/tag] of, nor more [tag]frightened[/tag] by my leadership in Washington, including the presidency, by the Senate, and —

Audience Members: Booo!

Bush: No, wait a sec — let him speak.

Q: And I would hope — I feel like despite your rhetoric, that compassion and common sense have been left far behind during your administration, and I would hope from time to time that you have the humility and the grace to be ashamed of yourself inside yourself. And I also want to say I really appreciate the courtesy of allowing me to speak what I’m saying to you right now. That is part of what this country is about.

Bush: It is, yes. (Applause.)

TP has the video.

Man, I wish I could have seen that. Perhaps Olbermann will show it tonight.

  • Man, I wish I could have seen that.

    You know, I was thinking the exact same thing.

  • The body language from Bush speaks volumes about what little regard he has for the guy speaking to him or criticism in general. Openly dismissive, disrespectful and arrogant. It shows in his verbal answer as well. The man clearly didn’t ask Bush to apologize, just expressed a hope that he felt some shame for his actions. Not W. Shame, compassion, common sense and remorse are for the weak and Democrats. What a despicable human being.

    Worst. President. Ever.

  • Needs editing:

    And I would hope — I feel like despite your rhetoric, that compassion and common sense have been left far behind during your administration, and I would hope from time to time that you have the humility and the grace to be ashamed of yourself inside yourself. And I also want to say I really appreciate the courtesy of allowing me to speak what I’m saying to you right now. That is part of what this country is about.

    That’s better. More bubble-y.

  • pwn3d.

    The expression on the lady next to the speaker is priceless.

    “Oh, crap. He’s got a free ride to Guantanamo, but HOW am I going to get home NOW?”

  • Maybe reason is lost on the man. Maybe courageous saying of truth to power is also. Okay, in words even the President can understand: “Bush is an ass-hole, bigtime.”

  • Does anyone have the video of Harry Taylor being escorted into the parking lot by the GOP gestapo agents of the Dept. of Homeland Security and whisked away to a secret torture camp in Eastern Europe??

  • I wish I could have seen that too. I hope they replay it tonight somewhere, and hopefully everywhere. I would wait up half the night to see the look on Bush’s face. The worst president ever –I agree.

  • This was supposed to be one of those “hand-picked” audiences. Bush now has to deal with overt rebellion from within the ranks of a hand-picked audience. Yes—it was “just one guy”—just a single drop in the bucket of Truth—but even one drop signifies that the bucket is no longer empty. A standing ovation to this guy!

  • “Too bad Mr Taylor didn’t mention the fact that most Americans now think Bush is an incompetent liar.” – RacerX

    That must be a mistake.

    Bush is incompetent
    and
    Bush is a liar.

    However, as the NIE ‘release’ proves, he is not incompetent at lying 😉

  • It might be worthwhile to read on in the transcript and see just what effect Mr.Taylor’s comment had with this mendacious sonofabitch:

    THE PRESIDENT:” I’m going to start off with what you first said, if you don’t mind, you said that I tap your phones — I think that’s what you said. You tapped your phone — I tapped your phones. Yes. No, that’s right. Yes, no, let me finish.

    I’d like to describe that decision I made about protecting this country. You can come to whatever conclusion you want. The conclusion is I’m not going to apologize for what I did on the terrorist surveillance program, and I’ll tell you why. We were accused in Washington, D.C. of not connecting the dots, that we didn’t do everything we could to protect you or others from the attack. And so I called in the people responsible for helping to protect the American people and the homeland. I said, is there anything more we could do.

    And there — out of this national — NSA came the recommendation that it would make sense for us to listen to a call outside the country, inside the country from al Qaeda or suspected al Qaeda in order to have real-time information from which to possibly prevent an attack. I thought that made sense, so long as it was constitutional. Now, you may not agree with the constitutional assessment given to me by lawyers — and we’ve got plenty of them in Washington — but they made this assessment that it was constitutional for me to make that decision.

    I then, sir, took that decision to members of the United States Congress from both political parties and briefed them on the decision that was made in order to protect the American people. And so members of both parties, both chambers, were fully aware of a program intended to know whether or not al Qaeda was calling in or calling out of the country. It seems like — to make sense, if we’re at war, we ought to be using tools necessary within the Constitution, on a very limited basis, a program that’s reviewed constantly to protect us.

    Now, you and I have a different — of agreement on what is needed to be protected. But you said, would I apologize for that? The answer — answer is, absolutely not. (Applause.)”

    There’s only one thing that’s going to stop this goddamned criminal.

  • When one knows one is right then there can be no shame either without or within. Bush knows he’s right. He’s using the tools of faith building, i.e. “if the lie causes people to have faith then lying is moral.” I don’t think so and neither does over 42 million Americans already with more finding out by the minute. It’s a little boycotted by the press archaeological find. The source of the material used to construct the main arteries of the Bible has been found and is on the Internet at http://www.hoax-buster.org It proves beyond a reasonable shadow of a doubt that the Bible, the source of Bush’s and his supporters morality is a hoax. I believe this answers the man’s question.

  • Thanks Tom. Puts it in perspective. While I like what was said (or just the fact that there is still the opportunity to say things like that in our democracy), it’s depressing to see how well prepped the president is to deflect such plain and honest words.

    You don’t have to like these guys, but you have to respect how damned good they are at what they do.

  • Thanks Tom,

    What Bush is not saying is that he rounded on all his intelligence agencies and demanded to know why they didn’t catch the plotters of 9/11. The NSA looked especially bad, as they had transcripts of the 9/11 highjackers plotting away, only in Arabic, which of course they could not translate in time because they keep discharging all their language students for being gay.

    So Air Force General Michael Hayden, director of the NSA (he is the number two man in the Directorate of National Intelligence now) scrambled to come up with something to cover his very exposed backside. Thus, the NSA warrantless wiretapping program. And why is it warrantless? Because it gets about two significant hits for every thousand wiretaps. So Hayden’s lawyers said they couldn’t take the program to the Foriegn Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), which grants the FISA warrants. Which is basically because the FISC is not going to grant warrants to spy on Americans if you have a 00.2% success rate. So Hayden’s lawyers and Ashcroft’s lawyers decided to just claim tha the President could authorize the program for 45 days, and then kept reauthorizing it.

    Eventually, even Ashcroft and his cronies thought that the program had to stop. So Ashcroft was out and Alberto Gonzales was named Attorney General. At his confirmation hearing, Senator Russ Feingold asked him if the President had authority to spy on Americans without warrant. Knowing perfectly well that just such a program existed, and he was getting the job of Attorney General to ‘legitimize’ it, Alberto called the question hypothetical.

    Now remember, this program takes telephone numbers of SUSPECTED al Quaeda operatives, waits until they make a call or receive a call from the United States, then produces the information to give to the FBI to track these people down and question them. It produces thousands of tips a year. The FBI says it is a waste of their time, and that every tip that panned out they were already developing as a case.

    But here we have the President litterally saying that the reason for the program is so he doesn’t get blamed when we get hit by terrorists again.

    “We were accused in Washington, D.C. of not connecting the dots, that we didn’t do everything we could to protect you or others from the attack.” – George W. Bush

  • Every day that this cabal stays in power the price we’re paying gets higher. I’m with Tom, this SOB and his friends have to go.

  • Is anybody else creeped out by him talking about the “homeland”? Maybe I lived in Germany too long or something.

  • Imagine if some audience member razzed CLinton back in the day.

    The ‘citizen razzer’ would be a guest on every talking head show in existence.

    We would see ‘citizen razzer’ paraphanelia all around us.

    Regenery publishing would hire ghost writers for the ‘citizen razzer’ books.

    This feller – well, I’m fairly sure he’ll get no air time.

    Actually, he’ll get lots of time – in Gitmo, that is.

  • If we knew how to trigger government spying, we could all have lot of fun driving the government crazy.

    For example, a couple of million of us obtain a few phone numbers in known Al Qaeda neighborhoods around the world. Buy five $5 prepaid phone cards and start calling them every day for a week from a public phone. Keep whoever answers the phone on the line for as long as possible by talking terrorist buzzwords. That’d tie up the NSA for awhile.

    We could all send email to addresses in Iran on the same day with words like”nuclear” in them.

    How about a fake TIPS program? Everyone call in on the same day with an anonymous tip to the FBI about a plot to blow up something ridiculous like the Tupperware Museum.

    We can’t stop the government from spying on us so the trick is to get them to spy on as many people as possible and then start making stuff up. If I knew the government was eavesdropping on me, I’d start acting very suspiciously. I’d pretend to talk in code and make appointments that I wouldn’t keep. I’d call lots of perfect strangers and leave mysterious messages on their answering machines. I’d send email requests for information from every radical organization on the internet including the neo-nazis.

    If the government wants to spend my hard-earned tax dollars spying on ordinary citizens, my mission is to make life as difficult as possible for them. Steal this book!

  • Bush is a man with authority, under authority of his faith, he truly believes he is an instrument of gods will on earth, and as a man he’s susceptible to mistakes and he has made some big one’s, first he is not a great leader so therefore he got in with some extremely messed up people, called Neo-cons who filled his head full of bull cookie’s, they fed his ego, and he was ripe for the leading.

    What we have today is a man in over his head, with a lot of high minded minions with dreams of American world hegemony, twisted today out of failure.

    Bush and buddies, can not be turned out, of office easy, so to those wide awake and not drinking the KOOL AIDE, it appears many of the administration know where all the lie’s start and finish. Andy Card was just one in the line, leading horse manure peddlers, as was Libby.

    All of this for Power and world dominance and money, through military rule, and of course … starting and ending with OIL… a tri-fact-a of sorts. But the big losers and one of there legs of strength, is the Evangelical Community, they now see they have been had, by some very clever crooks and it’s hard now to tell there congregations the full and unbinding truth, but America’s Main Stream, has and have been waking up since 2000.

    And they have been called unpatriotic to treasonous traitors to silence there calls and words of truth to power, the Media being of two minds, a dwindling free press and a burgeoning corporate press led us into Iraq, with a big assist, off the heals of a true endeavor for Saddam, and in swift turn, Bush and friends pulled a 180 in the charge into war… to Iraq.

    Now what we have left is a swaggering, pontificating, arrogant C student, with a gullible republican Congress worrying there selves today about, which way to go. And all the while Bush fiddles, our treasures burn… America wake all the way up, and call for… at the very least Bush’s Censure, so Congress will start doing something for real, and bring our treasures home.
    http://lovethetruth.blogspot.com/

  • Not quite so awful as I thought.

    Shrub was raised in Texas, so he’s not allowed to interrupt. It’s considered rude. So instead he makes those precious, snide, getting-yelled-at-by-a-mall-cop sneers and eye-rolls like he did during the debate with Kerry.

    He does give a surprisingly polished, though factually false, answer.

    Not too bad considering he’s been in a bubble for so long.

    I’ll bet he was prepped. But he didn’t come off as awful as he could have. I’m still hoping for him to go ape-shit on someone, or have another “Who cares what you think?!” moment, this time with the cameras on.

    This was more like that time during the debate where he cut off Charlie Rose. He looked silly, and like an asshole, and in violation of the rules of the debate, but it wasn’t so shocking and over-the-line as to be the end of his political career. Unfortunately.

  • JC I thought the same thing about the lady.

    My second though was obviously the goon squad who keeps the dissenters out was asleep on the job.

  • Shrub was raised in Texas,

    Was he?

    I thought he was brought up in the Northeast & made his way to Texas sometime after he skipped out on the Guard.

  • He was a plant. It was all set up…

    “Look, negative comments, and see how the Mighty President handles it. He’s not out of touch. He’s not afraid to take tough questions….”

    It was all prearranged. Very clever…thekeez

  • I think that the President’s actions violated the consitution, and that in the words of Yale Law School Dean Howard Koh, to the Senate Judiciary Committe (which nevertheless saw fit to drop the issue along party lines), the program was and is “blatantly illegal,” or at least clearly illegal.

    However, I fail to understand what all this poking fun at the President accomplishes. In point of fact, I believe that this type of view often simply undermines legitimate cases that democrats, and perhaps even sometimes liberals, may have to make. I believe that the issue, as many that have been ovesimplified, distorted, and misconstrued in the media, is fairly clear cut. But that Americans need to learn the facts. it is hard enough for people to do this with all the misinformation and distortions out there (let alone, again, oversimplifications by the media)

    so when a good point is to be, or needs to be made, how is this helped by using unncessarily derogatory or conclusionary language? It is like a kick to the people who voted for Bush, and makes them less receptive to your message as opposed to the messages of others.

    The typical response that I receive on this is to then blame them for that, which only worsens the problem, and once again, focuses on the wrong thing. if the facts are that clear, why can’t the democrats effectively communicate them to others?

    I think this would start by viewing the President as a person trying to do his job. A very difficult job. And why the President resonated with enough people to get reelected, when, if you are saying these types of derogatory things, you probably believe that the current administration ran a very misleading campaign for reelection. Each time the current administraiotn mislead, all it did was further undermine their credibiliyt. Yet the President won reelection based upon the “trust” issue.

    I suggest part of this is that because many of those opposed to the President make such a derogatory, and subjective, rather than factual and reasonable case that graciously askes people to consider, that, as good as that case may be, few people outside of hard core demcorats listened.

    It would be helpful to understand why the executive branch did what it did, in terms of communicating why this prgram was a flagrant violation of our consitution, and frankly, intolerable. but, in addition to unnecessarily derogatory language, I see an extremely defeatist attitude, as well, regarding the program itself. ((what about shifting the negative energy towards combating the misleading rhetoric effectively, and getting the media to effectively do its job?))

    I think both of these approaches are wrong. If the President has not enough influence outside of his own circles to gain what may be a necessary expansive and broad view of these issues and the world, perhaps a Congress that was not far right wing in large part would have served as a helpful check (such as, for instance, a Judiciary Committee that does not, as noted, simply drop the inquiry into the clandestine authorization of the warrantless wiretap program). But perhaps what got in the way of achieving that, and in the way of achieving all of these broader points that need to be made, was all the negativity, which to everybody else serves to undermine both credibilty, and the message. not negativity in terms of communicating how the present adminsistration has pursued counterproductive policies, undermined legitimate governmental and constitutional processes, and expanded the reach and scope of the federal government (a case that ironically was not made) but negative in terms of name calling, appearing disrepsectful, or poking fun without at least accompanying support that is clearly laid forth.

    I have made this point countless times, and it has been often disregarded. Perhaps I am wrong, but i find this odd in consideration of how poorly the democrats have done over the past five years. That they will often, then, blame everybody but themselves, or focus on the wrong things (such as how correct they may be on the issues, which only makes this domination by the far right wing even more egregious) however, I don’t find odd at all, but consistent with my observations.

    I offer a few links which paints what I hope is a reasonably compelling, objective, non partisan case against both the wiretap progam itself, and the executive branch’s clandestine authorization of it in contravention of FISA. I think it is a case that all Americans needs to at least hear, and consider, frankly. You can help that by visiting it, and passing it along, if you think it makes a good case, or writing me at carter@pressthenews.com if you think there is room for improvement.

    the first of these two also touches on the comments by taylor (and the excellent post by cleaver above in so far as it recited the actual response of President Bush, which I incorporated therein) and what the response might indicate, as well as the substantive issue, and some references for it that you might use to help inspire the media to do its job on this issue

    http://www.pressthenews.com//h_taylor.html

    http://www.pressthenews.com/dancing_on_the_edge.html

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